


Dig a Little Deeper, Darling

by tagelied (under_a_linden_tree)



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Archaeology, Aziraphale is "just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing" (Good Omens), Aziraphale is So Done (Good Omens), Banter, Crowley is Bad at Flirting (Good Omens), Enemies to Lovers, Flashbacks, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, SO MUCH BANTER, University, and now they have to work together on site, and they were both archaeologists, more characters to be added when they show up, that's what happens, what if crowley worked for ancient aliens
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:40:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27766135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/under_a_linden_tree/pseuds/tagelied
Summary: Dr. Aziraphale Fell is a well-respected man of his trade.Anthony Crowley, however, is a fraud. Or at least that's Aziraphale's opinion when a letter from the dean's office forces him to work on site with the poster boy of pseudo-sciene. Their rivalry goes back several years, and Aziraphale can't imagine anything productive coming off this - but then Crowley surprises him.Perhaps, all he needs to do is dig a little deeper...
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 45
Kudos: 48
Collections: FFS (Feral Fandom Saturdays), Good Omens Human AUs





	1. Interfaces

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thank you to [smolalienbee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smolalienbee/pseuds/smolalienbee) and [Thyra279](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thyra279), who beta-ed this piece and gave great advice!

“So… what are you guys up to here? Dug yourself into a hole, have you?”

The sun was burning brightly in the August sky, and a sweltering heat lay over the meadow. Sweat had been sticking to Aziraphale’s neck since around 9 am, and it was slowly but steadily getting worse, spreading over his forearms, knees, and the small stretch of skin between his lips and nose. He quickly wiped across his lower face with the back of his hand, cursing himself when he felt the rubber of his dirtied gloves stick to his skin.

He looked up to see who disturbed him at his work, but it was hard to make out more than the outline of the figure against the merciless sun. It was a tall man, that much he could be certain of, and the strange mess of his hair and the lilting cadence of his voice were all too familiar to Aziraphale. He blinked a few times, trying to get his vision back on track. That was one of the downsides of working in the middle of summer: The ground reflected so much light it affected the eyes of the workers and with more time spent in the trench, it took longer for the sparks dancing in his vision to fade.

When he’d finally adjusted, he recognised those sunglasses and that sleazy grin within a moment. Aziraphale sighed and slipped his gloves off. This was going to be a long conversation.

“Well, what does it look like, Crowley?” Crowley made a strange noise that consisted almost entirely of consonants, but before he could interject something that actually resembled senseful words, Aziraphale continued. “We have a trench, a total station, several wheelbarrows, shovels, trowels, a carefully selected staff of scientific assistants–”

“Yeah, Fell, I know what an excavation is. Funnily enough, I’ve been on a couple of those myself. Somewhat of a necessity when you have a degree in archaeology, innit?”

Aziraphale frowned. He sincerely hoped that the expression conveyed his personal opinion, which was that _Dr_. Crowley had no business stalking around, waving his degree about, when he did what he did for a living. _Pseudo-_ science. No-one who deserved even an ounce of respect from Aziraphale would approve of his haughtiness.

“Why are you asking, then,” he snapped, resting his hands against his sides. If it weren’t for the fact that Crowley would certainly ridicule him, he would have winced at the sticky warmth of his hands against his linen shirt.

Crowley lazily shoved his hands into the pockets of his too-tight jeans and leant back against the reinforced heap of earth behind him. Honestly, how could anyone wear black jeans to an excavation? There’s nothing worse than dark colours and rough, constricting fabrics in the summer heat. And yet, he just kept grinning at him, relaxed and comfortable, although there was a slight change in the tone of it, moving somewhat towards mischievous. 

“What’s a highly skilled, brilliant fellow like you doing alone in the trench during lunch break, evening out the profile edges?”

Aziraphale merely blinked at him. It took his brain a moment to catch up with that statement.

You see, there was a certain something about Aziraphale and words like _brilliant_ , _clever_ , or _interesting_. He’d spent far too much time doubting his own abilities when he was younger, coming from a family with little appreciation for genuine praise, and he’d worked so very hard to get where he was now. Still, he’d always remained a misfit, an outcast even among his own folks, and being told things like this struck a chord with him. It threw him off track, so to say. But of course, Crowley couldn’t know about that. He was merely trying to tease.

“Well, you might be able to see it if you took off those horrid sunglasses, but the profile isn’t even here,” Aziraphale finally said, after what he was certain must have been a few too long moments of eye contact.

Crowley nodded and hummed. “Sunglasses or no sunglasses, we’re equal in not being able to see everything we’d like to.”

“How profound,” Aziraphale responded, shoving his gloves into his pockets.

He marched across the trench to the nearest wheelbarrow and leant his spade against it, carefully ensuring that it wouldn’t fall while he was gone. If Crowley was going to bother him, he might take his lunch break now, before the other workers returned and he was inevitably going to get on their nerves, too. Perhaps he could bore him so much that he’d leave without causing any trouble.

Careful not to step onto any of the freshly excavated layers his colleagues were working on, Aziraphale meandered through the trench and Crowley followed him on the other side of the division. Their paths crossed by the designated entrance and Aziraphale quickly used his trowel to clean the earth off his safety shoes so he wouldn’t drag it all across the meadow.

“All I’m asking is why you would do a mindless task like that yourself.”

“Oh, I just like it when tasks are done _properly_. You know that things like that show up in the documentation, so why would you do it sloppily?”

That was, indeed, the reason why Aziraphale committed to these tasks himself, or so he told people. Proper documentation was the business card of any excavation, and missing the details would reflect badly on a respected archaeologist like Dr. Fell – who was _known_ for his minute methods of working. But he also genuinely _liked_ those mundane yet precise tasks. He revelled in the physicality of the work. So whenever he noticed that one of his students had tried, but not quite succeeded, he went about fixing the thing himself.

Of course he wouldn’t tell Crowley that.

Especially not since Crowley was spending his time bothering Aziraphale, kicking pebbles across the ground.

“Yeah but – you’re a site director,” he said, rolling a stone under his heel. “Those are tasks for the students, right?”

“You must be sorely misinformed, Crowley. I’m not a site director. I’ve never been one and I don’t think I ever will be.”

Crowley looked up from whatever sigil he was etching into the ground and squinted at him behind the sunglasses.

“So that old wanker Gabriel is still handing out the teaching jobs, eh? Who’s the head of this campaign, then?”

“Michael. And I do wish that you would stop calling him that. Mr. Archer might not be a friend of yours, but he does deserve respect. Oh dear–” Aziraphale stopped in his tracks, patting down his trousers and finding only a trowel in his pocket. “I forgot my water bottle.”

Crowley smirked at him, but there was something… something strangely gentle to it. Almost benign.

“You’ll forget your own head next,” he said, and with a far too dramatic flourish, he extended his hand, which he’d hidden behind his back before.

Aziraphale glanced between the blue glass bottle and Crowley’s face. That grin was still on his face, and Aziraphale found himself stuck between clicking his tongue in an admonishment of Crowley’s childish flair for drama, and fighting the silly blush rising into his cheeks. This had no business feeling as embarrassing as it did, but he’d grown to realise that behind Crowley’s facade of insouciance, carelessness and swagger was someone polite, and maybe even _kind_ , and that threw Aziraphale off track on the rare occasions it shone through the cracks.

“Thank you,” he finally said, after a few moments of awkward silence.

He took the bottle from Crowley’s hand and rinsed his palms, carefully scrubbing at the dirt that stuck to the grooves of his skin despite the gloves he’d worn for work. It would take days for the dirt to be scrubbed out from underneath his fingernails, weeks for the calluses to disappear. He knew that, and yet Aziraphale couldn’t help it; he wanted his hands to be as clean as possible. He devoted a great amount of time to make them seem like they did _not_ belong to someone who spent several months a year doing manual labour. So it had become a ritual, rinsing his palms before he drank the first gulp.

“Is there a reason why you’re here or have you only come around to pester me?” he said, when he’d fought off the most urgent thirst.

“Actually, I think I’ll have to speak to Michael if she’s the one in charge here. I’m _very_ interested in this site, so I’ll probably hang around here a bit in the future. Look over your shoulder, so to say.”

Only Aziraphale’s good manners kept him from snorting at that statement. “Thank you, but the last thing I need is a nutter looming over my back.”

“Perhaps I don’t plan on nutterering around,” Crowley said, a sly smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

“I doubt that nutterering is a word. And I also doubt that Michael will allow you to stay.”

He crossed his arms on his back and was just about to walk over to their break tent, as a means of signifying how ridiculous and unworthy of his attention he found the idea of Crowley being allowed to loiter here day in, day out, when Crowley laughed out loud. It wasn’t a full-bellied, happy kind of laugh; instead, it had an edge of malicious amusement to it.

“See, that’s where you’re wrong,” he said. “I have _very_ compelling arguments. One of them being a permission slip from none other than the dean’s office. Don’t look at me like this, I’m not lying, why would I lie to you?”

Indeed, Aziraphale was giving him a rather odd look. He found it hard to believe that _anyone_ would consider having a proponent of such nonsense as the ancient astronauts “theory” on site a good idea, but then again, they might not even be aware of who Crowley truly was. A man who made his living on spewing pseudo-scientific humbug, confusing viewers and alienating (no pun intended) academics. A mess of a person who breezed past like a storm and left chaos behind.

Aziraphale huffed, and hoped that conveyed the essence of his thoughts. “Because that’s what people like you _do_! You lie.”

This time, he really did turn on his heel, stalking across the lumpy ground, which tried its best to keep him from making any actual progress walking. It had rained the night before, and they were lucky that they could work at all, but Aziraphale didn’t particularly feel like appreciating this fact, more like cursing the weather as a whole.

“I’m not. The infallible, oh-so-proper Upper Tadfield university tolerates my existence, even if you don’t like that idea.” From the corner of his eye, Aziraphale noticed that Crowley shook his head and set into motion as well. “We’ll be colleagues. It’s just three weeks, I’m sure you can handle that.”

“Of course. After all, I’m a professional. Unlike… certain others.”

The way over to the tent had never seemed so long to him, with this mixture of burning-hot sunshine, sticky earth and Crowley’s voice bearing down on him. He could see Michael handing out instructions to the students, who had to squint at her sharp outline in the midday light. Some were already re-stacking their seemingly endless supply of finds labels and plastic bags. The break was slowly but surely coming to an end, and that would mean that he’d probably be stuck with Crowley for another while. Unless Michael actually wound up talking to him, which was unlikely.

“Oh, I can be quite serious when I’m working,” Crowley said, having caught up with Aziraphale already. His legs truly were unfairly long – the man was, what, 70 percent legs?

“Certainly.”

“Which is not now, since it’s your lunch break, in case you hadn’t noticed. I know how hung up you get on things.”

He looked almost a little self-satisfied, as though this was a particularly astute observation and not something that anyone who knew Aziraphale for longer than a few hours would find out immediately. Ever since he’d been a little child, he’d had the blessing – well, it was debatable if it was a blessing or a curse – of a marvellous attention span. When he truly focused on something, he rarely stopped before this task was done. Unless, of course, he was quite rudely interrupted.

Aziraphale defaulted to his usual way of fighting back against Crowley’s interruptions – the best and most satisfying he’d discovered so far (although even _that_ never seemed to deter him for long): Absolute, unadulterated pettiness. So he tried for his kindest smile. “Why, thank you, Crowley, that’s very kind of you to say. I’d never have noticed that I was standing alone in the trench.”

“That’s what you’ve got me for,” said Crowley, and he wore that grin. The one that kept confusing Aziraphale because he could never tell if it was genuine since he was having fun, or something that mocked him right back in turn.

He was just trying to come up with an answer to that when they reached the tent and Crowley waved a hand at Michael. She shot Aziraphale a curious look but quickly schooled her expression when Crowley approached her. They were used to visits; she probably expected that he was just another resident of Lower Tadfield who had dropped by to find out more about the excavation they were doing. Lots of people came by these days, from families to joggers to the local elderly who were looking for something to do on a lazy day.

Well, it was none of Aziraphale’s business from here on out, so he reached for his bag and sat down on one of the knee cushions. Lunch was always a welcome part of his day, and the benefit of working longer meant that he could start his break when none of the students were around to bother him while he was eating. Not that the students bothered him per se, but he preferred to savour whatever it was that he’d prepped in the morning, and they were young and excited and talkative – all things that Aziraphale decidedly was _not_.

While he ate his leftover risotto in the shade of the tent, he could still pick up on scraps of the conversation between Michael and Crowley. Surprisingly enough, it seemed to be going really _well_. Michael even laughed at some point, which didn’t happen very often when they were in the field – she took the job very seriously, and rarely found occasions for jokes.

“So you’re interested in what, exactly?” Michael asked, having reigned in her laughter.

Crowley buried his hands in his pockets and shifted momentarily before he responded. He spoke too quietly for Aziraphale to understand it all, but he could make out _shards_ and _fabric_ , which sounded generic enough. Besides, it was truly unlikely that they’d find extant fabric here; the ground was not favourable at all.

“Anyway,” he said, a little louder. “I think it would be an interesting opportunity.”

“Most certainly, yes.”

Aziraphale nearly choked on his rice. Michael couldn’t be serious, could she? Calling the potential exploits of a fraud an _interesting opportunity_. Well, perhaps it might get them exposure, and exposure often resulted in a bit of extra funding nowadays, but it also posed a certain danger. When sites got too well known among the lay people, they tended to get disrupted by detectorists and the like. That would be a truly pitiful side-effect of their excavation, especially since they intended to return here in the future, with the site being little more than a stone’s throw away from the university.

Crowley nodded in the distance. “I’m offering to help, too. The documentation aspect in particular, I’m most familiar with that these days.”

“Any help is appreciated. Our technician’s currently employed at a different project, so the work is bearing rather heavily on Dr. Fell’s and my shoulders.”

Oh dear. Michael was not only willing to tolerate Crowley on site, but she also accepted his so-called help? This didn’t sound good to Aziraphale’s ears at all. Of course, he knew that Crowley had a talent for talking – he must have one, considering the line of work he was in – but how he’d convinced Michael so quickly escaped his understanding. They didn’t just take anyone on, not even when they had a degree. But Crowley was smiling and shaking hands with Michael, and before long, he walked past the tent, giving Aziraphale a final smirk – and probably a wink behind those sunglasses.

All of a sudden, lunch didn’t seem all that appealing to Aziraphale anymore. Perhaps he should make the most of the remaining day, ensure that his tasks were completed in the right order before things would inevitably be disrupted. The Lord knew what Crowley was going to get up to if he really appeared again the next morning. Which Aziraphale sincerely hoped he didn’t.

  
Of course he did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments and Kudos are, as always, much appreciated.
> 
> Interfaces are the surfaces of archaeological layers, connecting and separating one from the other.


	2. Pseudoscience

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Aziraphale finds out about Crowley's profession.
> 
> “You’re a nutter!” the words escaped Aziraphale before he could stop them, alongside a scandalised gasp. Crowley nearly choked on his drink.
> 
> “I’m not a nutter, I just earn my money with it,” he said, a defensive edge sharp in his voice. He set the bottle down and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth carefully, trying to catch the spillage of his beer.

_A summer night, six years ago._

The lofty room was filled with people, gathering to discuss the new insights the presentation had yielded earlier on in the evening. It was already getting quite late at this point, and, admittedly, the conversations were starting to be less insightful than fuelled by the warm comfort of a drink or two too many.

Aziraphale had just said his goodbyes to Dr. Michael and her family when a shock of red hair caught his eye. It looked strangely familiar, intensely colourful even in the half-dimmed light of the conference room. In fact, Aziraphale could only remember ever meeting one person with hair like that, but that would be a great coincidence, wouldn’t it?

He downed the final dregs of his wine, set the glass back down on the table and fixed his bow tie. Only one way to find out, really.

As he made his way through the crowds, he kept his eyes trained on that familiar figure. It seemed just as he remembered it, lanky and bony and somewhat serpentine in its movements. There was no mistaking it, he’d known the man before.

“Fancy running into you here,” he called out when he was merely a few paces away, giving the other man enough time to back away in case this was a misunderstanding or, more likely, that he couldn’t remember Aziraphale. Why would he?

It took a moment for the man to realise that it was him who was being spoken to. When he did, he turned around swiftly, nearly sloshing some of the beer he was holding with the impulsivity of his movement. He raised his eyebrows over the rims of his dark glasses until, a moment later, a surprised smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

“... Alexander Fell?” he asked, just a little disbelieving.

“Dr. Fell, actually,” corrected Aziraphale and smiled encouragingly.

“Of course. Wouldn’t have expected anything else, considering the funny little crowd we have here tonight.”

He inclined his head towards the group of chattering scientists a few metres to their left, clearly a bit too inebriated already. This was, perhaps, the worst part of those conference lectures – the need to socialise, connect to one’s colleagues, absolutely dreadful to Aziraphale’s mind. He preferred to stay holed up among his books or to interact with people whose merits he had already grown to appreciate. Friendly chit-chat had never been his forte, especially not under pressure. It was a strange caricature of genuine kindness, and not one he found easy to embrace.

“And you? I mean – what do you do? Are you an archaeologist too?”

“What else am I going to be? An aardvark? ‘Course I am, Fell.”

“Well, I suppose it _is_ a rather redundant question, considering the circumstances of our meeting. What, if I may amend my question, is your area of expertise?”

He shifted a bit, from one foot to the other, and it would have had a comic effect if Aziraphale hadn’t been determined to take the moment seriously. “I, er, do work for television.”

“Television? That’s marvellous – you see, I’ve always said that science ought to be more accessible to common audiences. It’s very important that they get educated on the matter of their history, be it cultural or material. Which programme do you work for – perhaps it could broaden my horizon.”

“Oh, yeah, it certainly could. Definitely something you’d never have thought of before.” When no further elaboration came, Aziraphale raised an eyebrow encouragingly. “You can look me up, you’ll find it in a minute. Anthony Crowley’s the name.”

“I am aware.”

He cast Crowley a short look to signify that he was still paying attention to him as he searched his pockets for his phone. Eventually, when he’d found it in the left pocket of his jacket, he fidgeted with the browser and opened a search engine. While he typed the letters of Crowley’s name into the box, Crowley himself was sipping at his beer.

Aziraphale hovered over the results the search engine had spit out and finally decided to give the Wikipedia article a go. It was much longer than he expected. Most archaeologists had very short entries, if they had one at all, unless they lived up to the likes of a John Beazley or a more infamous Arthur Evans[1]. Crowley’s, however, was a different kind of story. It even had a photograph of him at the top, a dreadful picture in which he had even longer and untamed curls than he did now. Aziraphale tore his eyes away from the image and read the first paragraph of the article.

> **Anthony J. Crowley** (born 1978) is a British writer and television presenter. He is a well-known supporter of the pseudoarchaeological ancient astronauts theory, best known for his work on the television series Ancient Astronauts (since 2007). Crowley is a graduate of La Sapienza university of Rome, with a PhD degree in archaeology. Nevertheless, his work has found great measures of criticism from scientists and academics who consider his work pseudoscience.

“You’re a nutter!” the words escaped Aziraphale before he could stop them, alongside a scandalised gasp. Crowley nearly choked on his drink.

“I’m not a nutter, I just earn my money with it,” he said, a defensive edge sharp in his voice. He set the bottle down and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth carefully, trying to catch the spillage of his beer.

Aziraphale was positively scandalised. It had been quite a while since he’d last spoken to a real nutter. They weren’t exactly getting rare these days, but by and large, the ones he spoke to mostly turned out to be funnymen who wanted to get a thrill out of bothering a stuck-up old academic. But Crowley, no, Crowley had made a _career_ out of this, had turned this into the purpose of his work. That nonsensical theory must be a tremendous part of his life! To think that he would dedicate his time to it to such an extent was, frankly, rather horrifying. The man had talent, he must have, with a postgraduate degree from a university as well respected as La Sapienza. The mere _idea_ that he was throwing all this away on purpose… well, it baffled Aziraphale, and it frankly made him a little angry.

“Even worse!” Aziraphale exclaimed, when he’d finally regained a grasp on his language. “Where’s your integrity, Crowley?”

“It went down the drain some fifteen years ago. I’d say you know how it is, but–” and here he ran his gaze behind those dark glasses up and down Aziraphale’s figure, moving his head just enough for Aziraphale to notice it too, until he finally stopped at his hands, which were currently fidgeting with the chain of the pocket watch he’d inherited a few years ago. “– yeah, I don’t think you know how it is.”[2]

“Oh, of course, not everyone is quite as fortunate as I have been, but _ancient astronauts_ , really?”

Crowley shrugged and sipped at his drink, but it didn’t seem to provide him with a suitable defence of his questionable life choices. “It pays the bills. And it _is_ , strictly speaking, still within our field of expertise.”

Aziraphale noticed that Crowley had a slight lisp, and he wondered if he simply hadn’t picked up on that before, or if it only showed now. He didn’t let his mind dwell on that, though.

“Oh yes, I see you put your degree to use,” he said instead, with a little sarcastic huff to accompany it and give the sentence the right sentiment.

“Well, at least it’s not just home decor to me,” Crowley replied and smirked. Aziraphale had opinions on that smirk, and a solid 95% were nowhere near good.

“Home decor? Oh no, dear, there’s more to our – well, _my_ field – than rolling in the mud.”

Crowley still smiled that lopsided grin. Aziraphale wanted to wipe it off his face and admire its roguish insouciance at the same time.

“Of course, yeah,” Crowley said, playing with the bottle cap on the bar table. “But be honest with yourself, when have you last been out in the field? You’re doing the work a historian could do, with an extra class or two.”

“How would you know?”

Aziraphale was glad that the sentence sounded a little harsh when it came out of his mouth. There was no way for Crowley to know this, but Aziraphale still felt insecure about his work sometimes. Perhaps too often for a man with a teaching position at a respected university, but that might change when he’d been employed for a longer amount of time. Now, however, a small voice lived in his head, occasionally speaking up when he was having a bad day or when he’d felt good for a too long span of time already, mocking him for the papers he wrote and the courses he held, telling him that anyone could do what he was doing. That he was, in the bigger picture, quite useless.

Crowley snapped him out of his thoughts when he dropped the bottle cap and it fell to the ground with a soft _pling_.

“I hear things,” he was saying. “Even us nutters need to be connected, networking is _everything_.”

“Ha, certainly.”

Since this was an exclamation, which did not necessarily require any further course of conversation, silence fell between them for a minute, excruciatingly awkward. It was filled with a curious sort of hostile interest. They weren’t exactly getting along like old chums, and yet, neither of them seemed to be able to fight intrigue at whatever the other was going to say next.

“Well,” Crowley mumbled after the clock hand had moved a minute to the left. “That went down like a lead balloon.”

“Have you always sounded so Northern?” said Aziraphale, himself sounding rather a bit more hostile than he’d intended to but this conversation really – _really_ wasn’t going as Aziraphale had planned.

“Used to be much worse, if you remember. Since when do you sound so posh? Just like one of the blokes that work for the BBC.”

It was hard to say whether Crowley was offended or not. He didn’t let anything _show_ , that much was certain, but his bite sounded a little different.

“Well, at least I don’t sound like someone who works for” – here he paused, fighting the obvious discontent on his face, but his heart wasn’t really in it, so he decided to let his disgust seep into his voice even though it was probably, most likely, highly improper – “the _History_ Channel.”

In some wicked way, Aziraphale was relieved to know that Crowley had chosen to do, well, _this_ , with his life. His memory of his former fellow student was faint. They’d only spent a few weeks together in close quarters, on Aziraphale’s very first excavation. All other overlap had been limited to chit-chat after lectures or discussions in the few courses they’d both booked. And yet, strange, boisterous, loud Anthony Crowley had left an impression on young Aziraphale that he’d never truly been able to shake off. Whenever the thought of Crowley had passed through his mind, he remembered the creativity and the mischief behind those glasses. It had been proper glasses back then, he was sure of that, although he couldn’t remember what exactly they’d looked like.

Anyway, Aziraphale had always considered Crowley interesting, and he didn’t have time to find someone interesting these days. It was good, really, that Crowley had chosen a profession that Aziraphale could, by no means, respect. Especially since Aziraphale had a history with interesting men, and a tendency to get his heart just a little bit cracked.

Even after many years, Crowley looked good, he still had a clever mouth, but he was also a nutter; that was a dealbreaker and Aziraphale was thankful for it. He couldn’t even consider renewing a friendship, or an acquaintanceship rather, with the man, no. All they could be was rivals, considering their trades. Crowley produced the sort of content that Aziraphale would have to spend many hours of his life on debunking, and only once that obstacle had been cleared out of the way, would he be able to truly connect with people, to teach even laymen about the treasures their past material culture had to offer.

“Don’t think they’ve got _History Channel English_ in the dictionary,” Crowley grumbled and shook his red curls out of his face. “And don’t say _BBC English_ isn’t in there either, it’s in the Cambridge dictionary.”

“If you say so.” This only made him more determined to consult his dictionary once he arrived back home. He had quite a nice one, actually, an old leather-bound Oxford English Dictionary in several volumes that stood on the shelf above his desk.

Crowley huffed in amusement. “I do say so.”

The little smirk made its way onto Crowley’s face again. Aziraphale had to resist with quite a bit of determination in order to stop himself from smiling along.

**Footnotes**

[1] Aziraphale would most certainly not concede to calling the man “Sir Arthur”, not after the effect the man had had on the state of Minoan archaeology.

[2] Aziraphale really didn't know how it was, but then again, he might be a bit dense, because he never realised that Crowley had been doing the gazing thing before albeit with different intentions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge thank you again to my beta Thyra and to orderlyhouse who came up with the home decor line.
> 
> Also, good news, if you're enjoying the story so far - updates are now scheduled every other weekend, so I hopefully won't run out of material too soon.


	3. Terra Sigillata

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which work gets done and an odd conversation is overheard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, dear readers - it's time for another update! This time, we're getting a bit more into the subject matter while also being very silly. Enjoy!

The sun shone brightly and 10 am had passed already when Crowley showed up at the dig the next morning, and _showed up_ was the right term indeed. He looked as flash as anything in his tight dark jeans, over-designed sunglasses and deep-cut black shirt. He would have seemed more at home on a London underground train, an Oxford philosophy club or even at the Nottingham Robin Hood Beer Festival[1]. The only thing that connected Crowley to the setting of a countryside dig were the safety wellies he was wearing, reaching halfway up his calves. They were black too, naturally, albeit with bright red soles. He waved at Aziraphale when he spotted him in the corner, where he crouched over the rim of a vessel that was peeking out of the ground.

“Hey, Aziraphale, what d’you have there?” he asked, stepping over the thread that marked the outlines of the trench.

He crouched down next to the artifact in the earth and slipped his glasses down his nose to get a better look at it. Only the topmost edge of the pottery piece was sticking out of the ground, a dull grey against the brown ground. Small ridges were engraved along the rim.

“I’d say it’s a cooking pot.”

“Hmm,” he hummed, sounding rather sceptic. “Well, then. If you say so.”

“I do, in fact, say so,” said Aziraphale, “and if you’d kindly let me focus on it, I could show you the unearthed piece very soon.”

Crowley hummed once more, and it sounded almost like the word _bowl_. He rocked back on his haunches before he got up and made his way across the site, to bother only the lord knew whom. For a few minutes, Aziraphale could work in silence, or what came close to it with the background noise of other tools and the soft chatter of students a few paces away. Carefully, he removed some of the earth around the vessel with the sharper side of his trowel, switching to finer tools when he got closer to the rounded wall of what he suspected to be an _olla_ , a rounded, handleless pot. The ground was slightly harder when he dug a little deeper, scraping at the earth with more force.

Aziraphale sat back and sighed. He patted the ground for his knee pillow and when he couldn’t find it, he looked up and searched the students around him for a potential culprit. Honestly, did none of them know proper etiquette? Like, for example, not taking away other people’s knee pillows, _especially_ if they’re in the age group where knees are wont to cause trouble anyway.

Instead, however, he spotted Dr. Michael in deep conversation with Crowley. He smirked. It wouldn’t be too long until Michael recognised Crowley for who he was, and that would be a moment to remember. To his great consternation, she remained entirely calm and checked her phone.

“Students!” she yelled across the site. “Everyone listen up for a moment and then I’ll let you have your break.”

A couple of relieved murmurs made the rounds among the students who were working behind him, uncovering the stones of a foundation wall. He understood them only too well, the more detail-oriented tasks could be quite draining. Inexperienced as some of them were, he’d imagine that the first cramps must be forming in their hands by now.

He followed the students towards the break tent and dusted off some of the dirt clinging to his clothes. Dr. Michael was already getting a little annoyed at how long they were taking to pack up for lunch break.

“We’ve got a new member on our team for now,” she said, pointing toward Crowley. “Dr. Crowley is here for reasons of his own independent research, but he has graciously offered to help you with your tasks and questions that might arise. Since Mr. Alphonse has other commitments, he will also explain the total station to you if you have trouble with the device and check on your work.” 

The students gave Crowley a couple of mildly interested looks and when some of them nodded, Dr. Michael sent them off on their break. She waved Aziraphale over instead, and he could feel an uncomfortable nervousness bubbling in his stomach. This was not a good sign.

“Dr. Fell,” she said, leading him a little down the way towards the tool shed one of the local farmers had offered to them. “I want you to keep a bit of an eye on our newcomer. I wouldn’t dream of ignoring a letter from the dean’s office, but you _know_ that I do not enjoy it when outsiders start walking around our site.”

Aziraphale knew that very well indeed. It was custom at their excavations to let people who showed an interest in their work have a glance at the procedures on a designated day, but in a place as open as this, with the landowner and the neighbours peeking at them regularly, they had decided to give them information and allow them to take a look from outside. Interactions with the interested visitors had ended up Aziraphale’s duty from the very first day of the excavation on, when Dr. Michael had decided that she didn’t enjoy talking to the laymen at all. In the end, it worked out rather nicely, though, because Aziraphale greatly liked talking to people, as long as they didn’t bother him on a personal level.

“Dr. Michael, I must ask – you _are_ aware of what Crowley does for a living?”

“Yes. I know, but we shouldn’t hold that against him. He doesn’t really believe in all that, now does he?” She asked the question with a raised brow that bordered on slightly desperate.

“Erm. Quite possibly not, no,” he said quickly and reassuringly.

“Excellent. You’ll do it, then? Since you two are already quite familiar and seem to be getting on well enough.”

Aziraphale huffed, surprised. “I wouldn’t call us ‘quite familiar’ but I’ll do it, yes.”

Michael gave him a thumbs up and left him to resume his lunch break. Nevertheless, he felt a strange lack of hunger. He had to be realistic. There must be a reason Crowley was allowed to be here, and the people in the dean’s office must trust him enough not to mess things up. The worst thing that could happen would be for Crowley to taint the good reputation of the department, but he wouldn’t do that, not on purpose, now would he? He wasn’t a terrible person, just a… misled man. Yes.

* * *

The sun was burning down on them mercilessly by late afternoon, and so far, the day had continued in a rather uneventful manner. Aziraphale had given the unearthing of the vessel to a student who he knew was quite excited about pottery and who he knew could handle it on their own. He’d spent the rest of the afternoon walking from team to team correcting the way the students handled their tools. While it might seem superfluous criticism to them, he knew that it would help them in the long run.

Around four, the students were already getting tired and Aziraphale could feel the fatigue settling over the site. He sat down a few paces away from them and began to look over the layer sheets to ensure that no mistakes had been made filling them in. After a few moments of near silence, however, his attention started to waver, distracted by the conversation Crowley was having with a student near him.

“If you like beer,” Crowley was saying, “– and who am I kidding, all archaeologists like beer – you should definitely go to the Nottingham Robin Hood Beer Festival. Went there last year, even took a picture with the giant Michelin man.”

“The giant Michelin man?” the student asked, a scrawny boy with dark hair falling across his face. He seemed genuinely interested in whatever personal story Crowley was sharing.

“Yup. Let me show you, actually.”

Crowley shoved the trowel he’d been playing with into the unexcavated patch of earth next to him and patted down his jean pockets until he found his phone. While Aziraphale watched him unlock it and swipe across the display a few times, he couldn’t help wondering how he was able to stand the conditions – the hard ground, the sweat that must be forming on his calves until the fabric stuck to them, the dust that was clinging to his knees and backside – in tight jeans. Aziraphale himself was already getting uncomfortable in his breathable all-weather trousers.

“Huh,” the student, now hunched over the phone screen, said. “That doesn’t look like the Michelin man, though.”

“What?”

Crowley’s voice rang sharp and disbelieving, and the student[2] cleared his throat a little awkwardly.

“The Michelin man, he – he doesn’t have a hat, he only wears some kind of sash. He’s also made of tires or something. Pretty sure that’s Pillsbury man.”

“Pillsbury man? You don’t mean the doughboy?” asked Crowley.

Aziraphale had a vague idea of what the Michelin man was, and the Pillsbury doughboy also rang a bell in his mind, but he couldn’t place them very clearly. Listening to the conversation, however, still amused him.

The boy shrugged. “Yeah. Must have had a makeover or something.”

From across the trench, one of the other students, a blonde named Sarah, raised her head. “Oi, you talking about Poppin’ Fresh?”

“Please don’t tell me that you collect doughboy memorabilia – hey, those people exist!” the young man said and Sarah rolled her eyes.

She pushed her shovel into the half-loosened earth she was working in and walked across the trench, wiping the sweat off her forehead. Once she’d meandered past the other students and reached Crowley, she crouched next to him and shielded her eyes from the sun so she could make out the image he was showing on the phone.

“That’s Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. From Ghostbusters.”

And with that simple diagnosis, she went back to work again. Crowley and the other student exchanged a confused look before he frantically typed something on his phone.

“She’s right, actually. Should have taken a picture with the giant pride flag instead.”

“The giant pride flag? What went _on_ at that festival?”

“Beer and cider, duh. It’s in the name.”

And with that, Crowley slipped his phone back into his dust-stained backpocket and leant forward to scrape at the ground with his trowel, the student dutifully watching the movement of his hand.

Aziraphale returned his attention to the layers the students had described and took note of the mistakes they had made in his small notebook. Some had written with the wrong kind of pen, some others had worded the colour identifications incorrectly. In the bigger picture, however, he was quite content with the work they’d done, considering that they hadn’t been here for long.

When he looked at his watch the next time, he saw that it was getting close to half past five, which meant that they only had half an hour left to work, so he collected the notes and brought them back to the tent. Sarah was nowhere to be seen in the trench anymore. Perhaps she’d already started the work on the ceramics they’d found throughout the day, carefully brushing the earth off them and categorising them by form and colour.

Aziraphale adjusted the laces on his shoes and made his way across the field. The ground was already less muddy today overall, but while the trench itself was mostly dry due to the cover they put atop it at night, the rest of the earth was still somewhat wet and made walking a little harder. He’d experienced much worse, but the way over to the toolshed was still somewhat exhausting after kneeling for a great part of the day.

In the shade behind the toolshed, a table and a camping chair had been set up for the ones working on pottery, bones and the like. Sarah was arranging a few shards on top of the laminated form tables that identified the shapes of the original vessels, her brows furrowed in concentration.

“How’s it going?” Aziraphale asked.

Sarah smiled, albeit a little distracted. “Mostly good. I’m having an issue with this particular piece though – it’s simply too small.”

“Might I take a look?”

Aziraphale inspected the piece of a painted rim that had broken off before being unearthed. It was curved slightly towards the outside, and when he brushed his finger over the edge of the breakage, he noticed that the fabric of the shard was rough with some sort of quartz mixed among the clay.

“It’s a deep red, isn’t it?” he said, pulling his glasses from his breast pocket and adjusting them on his nose. “It seems a bit brown-ish, but I’d say that it’s red after all. Put it in the bag with the T.S. ware and we’ll take a closer look at it when we have our microscope.”

“Will do.”

Sarah had a few years’ experience by now and working with her usually proved to be quite easy. She knew a great number of things about pottery and how to apply that knowledge, and when she didn’t know something, she was eager to learn. One day, she’d be an excellent archaeologist, Aziraphale was sure of it.

“Do we have something interesting today?” Aziraphale asked.

“Oh, yes, some cooking ware – black burnished, probably, considering the era and the colour. Would you like to take a look?”

“Of course!”

She picked up a few shards and handed them to Aziraphale, who inspected them close up and admired the intricate decoration of one, the glazing of another. Finally, she handed over a rather big piece, almost half a vessel.

“It’s a flat rimmed bowl, I’d say. Form 38, maybe 38.3a?”

Aziraphale looked at it closely, and he found that he had to agree. He was also certain, however, that this was the piece he’d declared to be an _olla_ -type cooking pot before.

“So this man is a nutter _and_ absolutely correct?” he muttered to himself.

Sarah put the shard down and gave him a confused look. “Sorry, what?”

“Nothing! Everything’s peachy,” Aziraphale exclaimed hurriedly. “Black burnished ware too, isn’t that interesting?”

“We’ve had quite a lot of that type here, yes. We’ll have to see what the next few days are going to bring, but it might be more than is typical. I’d be quick to pose a theory but perhaps we’re actually in a kitchen?”

Aziraphale considered this question for a few moments but then he shook his head. “I can’t say yet. There’s not enough evidence as of now – we’ll have to consider the layers too, and the possibility of later usage of the area. But I agree, it _is_ a possibility.”

Sarah nodded. “I’ll show you tomorrow’s finds too and call for you if something comes up.”

“Excellent,” Aziraphale said and made his way back to the tent, where the other students were starting to pack up their tools and backpacks.

He wondered how Crowley had known the shape of the vessel so early on when even Aziraphale had made a mistake. Identifying pottery forms based on small shards alone was quite difficult, especially when one had little practical experience. You had to know the tables and numbers they were referenced by, consider the colour and material to know which one to find. Granted, Crowley had only identified the broader type, but based on a rim – that still shouldn’t be easy for someone twenty years out of practise. He highly doubted that _Ancient Astronauts_ required Crowley to do research on pottery. It was almost… admirable, really.

Perhaps watching him as he worked wouldn’t be quite as much of a chore as Aziraphale had expected. There was a good chance that he really _was_ willing to help, after all. Just because he might use some of the experience for his usual nonsense, it didn’t have to mean that he wouldn’t want usable results to come out of this excavation. It seemed like he was enjoying himself too, and the students were flocking around him, listening to whatever story he had to tell, with those overflowing gestures of his.

Still, it was better to keep a close eye on him. Who knew what Crowley might get up to after all! It surely wouldn’t do any harm to watch him, now would it?

**Footnotes:**

[1] Aziraphale could draw this niche parallel because he had, in fact, been to the Nottingham Robin Hood Beer Festival before. They also had excellent ciders, but this was beside the point.

[2] Aziraphale couldn’t remember his name, and it bothered him but he couldn’t just go up and ask, now could he?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A massive thank you to my friends orderlyhouse, smolalienbee and mehrto for inspiring the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man convo. Yes, humour can start to get really weird after a couple of weeks at a dig.
> 
> Terra Sigillata is the term used for fine ceramics, often decorated, which were used as special occasion dishes.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments and Kudos are, as always, much appreciated. I can't promise an update schedule for this, but there _is_ an outline.
> 
> Interfaces are the surfaces of archaeological layers, connecting and separating one from the other.


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